The present invention relates to a gear tester for controlling the vertical and horizontal positions of mating gears, such as hypoid or spiral beveled gears, verify the quality of a given gear set under fixed and known mounting conditions to determine sensitivity of the gears to various programmed misalignments, changes in mounting conditions and the like which simulate deflections during use.
In the prior art, it has long been the practice to test on a substantially 100 percent basis, spiral bevel and hypoid gears to determine running qualities, such as tooth-bearing contact. It has further been known to use machines for running sets of bevel or hypoid gears together to determine optimum running positions of one gear relative to another. Such a device is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,795,143. The device in this patent permits adjusting the axes of the pinion and gear relative to each other for the offset of axes, as well as the positioning of the degree of intersection of the gear. However, this procedure involves the use of large slides and manual controls for the final positioning.
In order to determine the effect of various tolerances or differences in gear and pinion positions, the need has existed for accurately controlling the position of the gear in several degrees of freedom, while determining loads on the gears as well as simultaneously determining other performance factors of the gears. Such performance factors may be noise, the "footprint" of the pinion on the gear, and deflections that might occur on the gear itself caused by loading on the gear. Thus, measuring the loads on the gear in the controlled degrees of freedom is beneficial in determining factors that may be necessary for housing designs to minimize deflections and alignment problems.
Finally, in matched sets of gears, an optimum running position of pinion and the gear can be determined and used for final adjustment when assembled in a housing for use so that other than the nominal axial offset and positioning of the gears can occur.